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Bees Deluxe return to New Hampshire

Guitarist Conrad Warre calls the music of his band Bees Deluxe “acid blues for the 21st century.” It’s one way of saying that their hyphenate sound is hard to pin down, like catching a honeybee bare-handed. Some say it’s too rock for blues, others flip that analysis upside down, while more than a few detect jazz lurking between the bars.

“In the Venn diagram of those three genres, we’re right in the middle where no one else wants to be, where we overlap and are denied access by all the neighbors,” Warre said by phone recently. “Occasionally, we’ll throw them a bone and we will do something in 1/4/5/4/1 and confuse them, because they didn’t expect it.”

Music writers have a lot of fun with them. One called it “what might happen if Freddie King took a lot of acid then wrote a song with Pat Metheny and asked a strung-out Stevie Ray Vaughan to take a solo” and another likened their most recent album, Hallucinate, to “what Steely Dan would sound like if they played the blues.”

The 2023 album ranges across the spectrum. “Queen Midas” begins with gentle acoustic guitar, then shifts gears into a straight-up rocker. “When Is Yesterday” falls squarely into classic blues territory, though its lyrics sound like Warre was reading a Robert Heinlein novel when he wrote them. The spooky “Houdini” approximates the aforementioned Dan with a swampy undertone that keeps listeners guessing while they groove.

In New Hampshire, bikers seem to really enjoy the band, which consists of Warre, keyboard and harmonica player Carol Band, drummer Paul Giovine and a rotating cast of bass players — usually Adam Sankowski, but at an upcoming show in Laconia, Kevin Tran. The biker love has been around since Warre’s time coming up as a musician in England.

“I once played a castle in Austria, it was in a ruined courtyard,” he recalled. “The audience were all on Harley-Davidsons. To show their appreciation, at the end of every song they flicked their headlights at me.” At a recent gig at the Hawg’s Pen in Farmington, a bar owned by a guy who also runs a Harley dealership, the regulars told him Bees Deluxe played the kind of music the place needed.

“So that was nice,” Warre said. “What we do is we hit that sweet spot of the kind of tempos and keys and moods of people like the Allman Brothers but without playing covers or ‘The Thrill is Gone’ or ‘Mustang Sally.’ They like the groove and it’s a novelty to them, because they never heard Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland or wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him.”

Don’t ask Warre to name any influences.

“I don’t listen to the kind of music that we play; I’d rather listen to Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bach,” he said, adding keyboard player Band has a similar story. “She’s a classicist; I met her when she was playing jazz at Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge, she’s a real book player. I don’t suspect I’ll find her listening to Led Zeppelin when I come in the room unexpectedly.”

There are a few guitarists that Warre admires, including Jeff Lee Johnson, who played with The Time and appeared in the Prince movie Purple Rain. Another favorite is New Yorker Wayne Krantz. “His philosophy is, ‘Don’t play anything you’ve ever played before’ and I kind of liken that to what I try to do,” he said. “Like Jackson Pollock once said, ‘If you recognize something in the painting, blur it out.’”

Bees Deluxe
When: Saturday, Aug. 31, 1 p.m.
Where: Tower Hill Tavern, 264 Lakeside Ave., Laconia
More: beesdeluxe.com

Featured photo: Bees Deluxe. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 24/08/29

Local music news & events

• Familial: Rock ’n’ roll into the Labor Day weekend with The Ferns, a father/daughter/son combo that’s becoming a regular part of the summer outdoor music scene, particularly with lakeside shows. According to their bio, Mara began singing before she could talk and Quinlan took up keys before he could walk, while Dad’s along for the ride. Thursday, Aug. 29, 6:30 p.m., Harbor Bandstand, Newbury Town Dock, 976 Route 103, Newbury. Visit fernsfamilyband.com.

• Metallic: Legal wrangling aside, including a period when two groups used the name, Queensrÿche continues to make explosive music, including their most recent release, Digital Noise Alliance. The band currently includes original guitarist Michael Wilton and bass player Eddie Jackson, with lead singer Todd LaTorre taking the role once held by Geoff Tate, who now leads Mindcrime. Friday, Aug. 30, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $65 and up at tupelohall.com.

• Reflective: The creator of movies like Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy, Kevin Smith has in the recent past made time for a one-man show that ends with audience questions. The latter process lasts as long as it needs to, quite a feat for a guy whose most famous character is Silent Bob.Friday, Aug. 30, 8 p.m., The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, $58.50 and up at themusichall.org.

• Revival: Fans of the Big ’80s can fill their plate at Parti-Gras 2.0. Poison singer Bret Michaels leads an evening of music recalling Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band, with guest appearances from ex-Foreigner singer Lou Gramm, who does the correct version of “Cold as Ice,” and Dee Snider rocking Twisted Sister and on occasion nailing AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell.” Saturday, Aug. 31, 8 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 61 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $41 and up at livenation.com.

• Taylolivia: A DJ-led tag team event, 22 & good 4 u has the music of Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo on full blast all night long. Those feeling beset by a vampire can shake it off and have a teenage dream of an evening courtesy of an event company that hosts many Taylor-themed parties, including an all girly-pop show, and a snowy joint with boy band One Direction called Winter 1derland. Saturday, Aug. 31, 7 p.m., BNH Stage, 16 S. Main St., Concord, $18 at ccanh.com.

Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, by Priyanka Mattoo

Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, by Priyanka Mattoo (Knopf, 304 pages)

American women who chafe at the Sisyphean nature of household chores will adore Priyanka Mattoo’s grandfather.

A physics professor who once calmly shot a python in his house, he raised free-range kids at his family’s compound in India. If the children weren’t at school, “they were up to something, somewhere in the house, unsupervised,” and his household rules were simple, Mattoo writes: “study, don’t lie, and don’t embarrass the family.”

More importantly, Nanaji (“nana” is the word for the maternal grandfather in Hindi, “ji” the suffix of respect) insisted that the girls and women around him do no menial household work, believing “The only useful pursuits for a young woman were those of the mind.”

In her engrossing new memoir, Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, Mattoo recalls another family story: Her mother decided to take up knitting as a teen and was working on a sweater when her father sternly asked why she was doing that. “Did all the stores burn down?” he demanded.

Nananji was not against work, just domestic labor, and as such, Mattoo’s mother, and indeed the whole extended family, became remarkably competent adults and “pathologically assertive women.”

“The Kaul girls — doctors, engineers, professors, and some now grandmothers — have no patience for wallflowers, or fools. They enter every unfamiliar room as though they own it. Greet each stranger as though they’ve been reading up.” She adds, “I’m not sure anyone on that side of my family knows how to whisper, and I’m happier for it.”

But despite this remarkably strong and loving family unit, Mattoo and her immediate family suffered the loss of their treasured family home in Kashmir, the region at the center of a bitter territorial dispute between Pakistan and India. The property was ransacked and destroyed by militants, and the family lost not just their physical center but also the decorative contents gathered from all over the world. It is these precious belongings that give the book its title. “Bird milk and mosquito bones” is a phrase Kashmiris use to describe things “so rare and precious that the listener should question their very existence.”

Mattoo’s writing is exquisite in exactly that way, and she builds this series of discrete and elegant essays on the scaffolding of her transcontinental search for home in the aftermath of loss. Her experiences are often exotic by American standards; she writes somewhat disparagingly of the homogeneity of the American experience:

“What a crazy place America is, where you can drive for three straight days and everyone’s still speaking English, and all were seemingly raised on the same episodes of eighties television. But they’ll tell me, in a lather, that the barbecue is dry here, whereas in another place it’s more … wet.”

She adds, “I stare blankly, feeling like an alien that’s landed on a well-meaning planet, one that believes that it is the beating heart of the universe.” She’s got a point.

But there are universal themes here, of longing and loss and the desire for connection. And this is ultimately a book about family, one that is frankly captivating. Here, for example, is Mattoo’s description of a family vacation: “ … we vacation hard, my family. Ideally three weeks, and always a home rental, never a hotel. We settle in like we own the place and have always owned the place. … In the places we stay, there is no turndown service, often no air-conditioning, and the elevator always breaks on day two.”

A “thinky” child, Mattoo is now married with children and lives in the United States, and “presents as American” but is always searching for connection with her home continent. When a music app recommends a song that she becomes obsessed with (“Pasoori” by Ali Sethi), she tracks down the artist, who is from Pakistan, and asks him to speak on WhatsApp (“official communication tool of the global diaspora”). She says, “I need to connect with the person who has made me feel this way.” She later connects with another Pakistani singer, who turns out to also be a medical doctor. “Our countries still bristle with tension — they might always — but I’m encouraged by evidence of this generation’s desire to create,” she writes.

Mattoo veers off delightfully into asides about her children and her childhood. Consider this opening to an essay titled “You Are My Life,” which may be the best start to a chapter I read this year:

“The only grudge I ever held was in nursery school, thanks to a tiny witch named Christina.”

Or this, from a chapter simply titled “A Toothache”:

“I had a terrible toothache the summer my great-aunt Indra was murdered, but that wasn’t the worst part.”

One of the most interesting essays involves Mattoo’s search for a husband, aided in part by her parents, who respectfully asked if she’d be open to them setting her up — a challenge since they were by then living in the United States, where there are about 400 Kashmiri Pandit families, in which there were about 20 “single, age-appropriate men.” Mattoo said OK, but she wanted someone who would make her laugh, to which her mother said, “Funny’s not important!” But funny was. She wound up marrying a Jewish comedy writer.

The book appears to have taken shape in Peterborough at the MacDowell Artists Colony, where the author was in residence in 2022, working on a book that was then titled “16 Kitchens.” That’s now the title of a chapter in Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, in which Mattoo talks more about her mother and the family’s experience of living in Saudi Arabia, where the weather felt like “being warmed up in a low oven.” The MacDowell team can be proud of this one. As can Mattoo’s Nanaji. It’s been a while since I enjoyed a collection of essays so much. A

Album Reviews 24/08/29

Bill Leeb, Model Kollapse (Metropolis Records)

If you’re an OG techno-goth who gave up on this column owing to the lack of love I’ve showered on your favorite genre for many months now, it’s me, not you (or goth); my email box is nowadays a hopeless trash heap of messages in bottles from bands and labels looking for a little attention, and as far as goth goes I have no idea how many emails from Metropolis I’ve unintentionally missed. This is a great one for playing catch-up, though. Leeb is of course the prime mover behind Front Line Assembly and all the other stompy Skinny Puppy-ish bands you know and love (including Skinny Puppy itself), so what I was looking for here was a little risk-taking on Leeb’s part after so many years of lording over the space. Fat chance, of course, turns out. There’s Rammstein jackboot-stomping on the Shannon Hemmet-assisted “Terror Forms,” and tribal, Last Rites-era Skinny Puppy stuff on “Demons,” etc.; it’s all very nice but formulaic (I hate to burst any bubbles, but that’s of course not a shocking development). I mean, if you’re looking for kickass background ambiance for playing Wolfenstein: The New Order, you can’t go wrong here, and I’d prefer to just leave it at that if you don’t mind. B

Marquis Hill, Composers Collective: Beyond The Jukebox (Black Unlimited Music Group)

This Chicago-based jazz trumpeter is big on mixing genres; he views jazz, hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house and neo-soul as essential cogs in the African-American creative context. “It all comes from the same tree,” quoth Hill, “they simply blossomed from different branches.” Of course, promises are one thing, delivering on them is another, but he certainly does right out of the gate with “A Star Is Born,” a refreshingly courageous genre-salad that deftly moves from a timbales-driven (or sample thereof) shuffle to a sparklingly clean post-bop horn exercise with a dubstep drumbeat underneath it. Next is “Joseph Beat,” featuring guest sax guy Josh Johnson helping decorate a stubbornly rhythmic pattern that’s too sophisticated for Weather Channel backgrounding but wouldn’t be terribly out of place as some sort of 1970s game-show incidental riff. “Pretty For The People” is a dazzling, prog-referencing slow-burn; “Enter The Stargate” is an ambitiously nimble bit showcasing the understated abilities of drummer Corey Fonville. A relaxing, fun, terrific record. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• I give up, the summer’s over, the next Friday haul of new CDs will arrive on Aug. 30, which is tomorrow, according to this newspaper’s publishing schedule!

The first one we should probably talk about, not that we have to, is the 18th studio album from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, titled Wild God. Cave has always been something of an acquired taste that I never, you know, acquired, but even if you don’t like his proto-goth baritone voice or any music he’s ever done, one thing’s for sure: It’s usually expressive and revealing in some way. Far as that goes, I reviewed his Ghosteen album in this space in 2016; the album was dedicated to the memory of his son Arthur, who slipped and fell off a cliff while under the influence of LSD. It was a very impressive album that, you may dimly recall, was strong enough to tie Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly album on Metacritic’s scorecard that year. Before that, a short-lived relationship with PJ Harvey — actually its breakup — inspired the 1997 album The Boatman’s Call. As for Wild God, Cave is enthusiastic about it, saying that the band was “happy” when they put it together. That’s usually a bad sign in my experience, like it’s always better when the main songwriters are going through a breakup or some other trauma, not that I’d ever wish such things on anyone, but it is what it is. Now, despite the fact that the band was feeling happy, the title track is haunting, moody and occasionally sweeping; it starts out with a vanilla mid-tempo beat, Cave’s Sisters Of Mercy-prototype vocalizing leading into a noisy bliss-out that’s interesting enough I suppose.

• OK, and with Nick Cave out of the way, it’s out of the frying pan and into the art-rock fire, let’s look at American avant-garde lady Laurie Anderson’s new album, Amelia! If you’re old and tried a lot of different drugs in the early ’80s you’re probably familiar with Anderson’s 1982 sort-of-hit “O Superman,” an eight-minute-long exercise consisting of two notes, some vocoder-tweaked singing and some normal, minimalist warbling from Anderson. You probably have no idea what that song even is, but like I said, it was a surprise hit that year, and people still remember it; in fact it was used in one of the alternative endings to the 2018 interactive Netflix film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. OK, so now we know where this is going, let’s go have a listen to one of the tunes, “India And On Down to Australia feat. Anohni.” So OK, this is a soft, tastefully decorated, electronically enhanced joint that’s got a tinge of Enya to it. It’s quite soothing and pretty; I don’t hate it.

• London, England-based pan-continental underground band Los Bitchos specialize in instrumental music in the style of 1970s/1980s “cumbia,” a folklore-based dance genre from Colombia. It is danced in pairs with the couple not touching one another as they “display the amorous conquest of a woman by a man,” in other words it’s basically twerking except Americans can’t understand what’s actually going on. Talkie Talkie is the band’s new album, which leads off with “Don’t Change,” a dance-y beachy folk instrumental that may remind you of Tangerine Dream with a little bit of prog in there.

• And finally it’s John Legend, Chrissy Teigen’s husband, with a new album of children’s music, called My Favorite Dream! Apparently Chrissy uploaded a video of Legend playing and singing “Maybe” on a Fisher Price piano to one of their kids and then somehow Sufjan Stevens got involved, whatever. “L-O-V-E” is annoyingly happy, not Nick Cave-level happy or anything, more like Raffi/Barney-dinosaur-level happy, which makes me really unhappy.

Watermelon Punch

Planteray Rum, rebranded from Plantation Rum and owned by Cognac Ferrand, makes an excellent rum. One of its most recent releases has been something called “Stiggins’ Fancy” Pineapple Rum, named after a Charles Dickens character who liked to drink a pineapple rum or three. Although this rum has been infused with pineapple in a couple different ways, it does not taste too fruity. It is sweet but not syrupy, and very smooth.

It goes very well with watermelon.

Watermelon Punch

  • 2 ounces rum of your choice — I recommend Planteray’s “Stiggins’ Fancy” Pineapple Rum (see above)
  • 3 ounces fresh watermelon juice (see below)
  • 3 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
  • 1 ounce simple syrup

Juicing a watermelon

Choose a small, ripe, flavorful watermelon. It should have a pronounced pale spot where it used to rest on the ground when it was growing in the field. Try to find one with stripes spaced the width of two fingers across.

Cut the melon in half, and scoop its flesh into a blender with an ice cream scoop. Blend the melon thoroughly — slowly at first, then really put the spurs to it during the last few seconds. Watermelons are 92 percent water, so it should liquify beautifully. Strain it with a fine mesh strainer, and discard the small amount of pink pulp and seeds. It should last for about a week in your refrigerator.

Making the punch

Fill a mason jar halfway with ice, then add the rum, juices and syrup.

Screw the top on the jar, and shake thoroughly. Remove the lid, fill the jar the rest of the way up with ice, and add a straw.

How sweet and flavorful this punch is will depend largely on the quality of your watermelon. At worst this will be a refreshing take on pink lemonade, but at its best the lemon will take the lead in the front end, followed by a deep fruitiness from the melon.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Have a drink, play poker

United Way of Greater Nashua’s pub crawl is a night of fun for a good cause

The idea is pretty simple, at least in the beginning of the night.

Walk into a pub, drink a beer and get a playing card. Then move on to another pub and do the same thing all over again. After five pubs, five beers (or other beverage) and five playing cards, you will have a poker hand. When you and your fellow pub-crawlers have reached the final bar, you will compare poker hands. The crawler with the highest hand will win fabulous prizes.

The United Way of Greater Nashua (unitedwaynashua.org) is holding just such a Poker Pub Crawl, Saturday, Sept. 7, from 4 to 8 p.m. It is the brainchild of Samantha Cassista, the United Way’s Director of Corporate Partnerships. She is emphatic that nobody is under any obligation to drink five or more beers, or anything alcoholic at all, for that matter, to participate.

“You don’t have to purchase an alcoholic beverage,” she said. “You can do non-alcoholic the entire time.”

The United Way of Greater Manchester has a reputation for holding creative fundraisers, but this is the first time it has organized this particular event. Cassista said one of the most challenging aspects of pulling it together was finding enough bars on Main Street in Nashua that were within walking distance of each other and were willing to participate.

“It was not easy to get five bars to say yes to doing this,” she said. “Some of them said yes so quickly I was floored. Others gave me the silent treatment, and a few were flat-out ‘heck no.’ It was a long process to be able to find the five who were excited about it. So we’re very, very excited to show off these nice community partners and we appreciate them being able to support us by opening their doors and taking on something that might seem a little risky to others.”

Participants will start out at Kettlehead on Main (97 Main St.), where they will get their first playing card, and be broken into three groups.

“Our goal is to have about 100 people,” Cassista said. “The three groups will cycle between three different bars so as to not overwhelm the bars too much and allow for more bars to be able to participate. They don’t all have to have a 100-person capacity.”

Each group will be assigned a “captain” who will keep everyone organized and make sure they have a good time. Cassista said the captains will wear captains’ hats and will take photos of people throughout the evening.

“We’re going to have a Social Media Prize given to one of the three groups,” she said. “It’s like bartender’s choice, and to the group the bars think is the nicest group. It’s kind of a version of a Miss Congeniality Award.”

After starting at Kettlehead on Main, the groups will circulate between Penuche’s Ale House (4 Canal St.), Fody’s Tavern (9 Clinton St.) and Margaritas (1 Nashua Drive) before meeting at the final stop at Odd Fellows Brewing (124 Main St.). Participants will have to buy their own drinks at each stop, but all the participating bars will have special prices for them. “So we are supporting the local restaurants,” Cassista said, “but our people are getting special deals.”

Once everyone is together again, the pub-crawlers will compare their poker hands and the participant with the highest hand will win $150, while the other people will be entered in raffles to spread the luck around.

Cassista said events like this are a good way to introduce the charity to younger people who might not be familiar with it.

“A lot of people understand the United Way as sort of a name,” she said. “There’s a name recognition, but they don’t really know much about us. That’s OK, but this will help them to get a little more in touch with United Way, OK, so they do fundraising. I wonder why they do fundraising’. And hopefully that will bring on the next question.”

The Poker Hand Pub Crawl
Saturday, Sept. 7, from 4 to 8 p.m., starting at Kettlehead on Main Nashua (97 Main St.)
Participants can register online through the United Way’s event page. The $25 registration fee includes entry to the event, a map of participating venues, and a chance to win the grand cash prize and many raffle prizes. Proceeds go to support United Way of Greater Nashua.

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